There is no question that COVID-19 has impacted the way businesses hire and recruit in 2020. Have you taken the opportunity to evaluate who you currently have on your team? 

Watch the webinar below to hear insights from Clint Smith, Founder & President of CareerPlug, and James Winfrey, Head of Partnerships and Integrations at Talent.com as they discuss why this is the best time to reflect on your people and processes, as well as best practices for hiring in 2020 and beyond.

By the end of this webinar, you should be able to:

• Evaluate your current team and get the right people in the right seats
• Create an Ideal Candidate Profile
• Optimize your job posts
• Get maximum value out of job boards

Here are a few highlights from the webinar: 

Who’s on your bus? 

Jim Collins created a perfect analogy for a foundational recruiting strategy in his book Good to Great: 

• The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it. They said, in essence, ‘Look, I don’t really know where we should take this bus. But I know this much: If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we’ll figure out how to take it someplace great.’

What would your org chart look like if you drew it from scratch?

Clint Smith advises: “Start with a blank white board and create what an org chart should look like for your company – not just for now, but for the future. We just did this at CareerPlug and it was transformational. There were some roles that were legacy things from years ago that were still around and it wasn’t until we said ‘we’re going to start from scratch’ that we were able to evaluate this thing from the top down and really make a difference.”

What’s your Talent GPA?

Once you’ve determined what your org chart should look like, the next step is to evaluate who you currently have on your “bus.” Smith uses an evaluation approach he invented called Talent GPA.

All that you need to do is ask a single question for each member of your team and then grade your response: How would you feel if you found out that [EMPLOYEE NAME] was leaving the company?

Give them a score based on the following scale:

• A (4 points) – Sudden feeling of being punched in the gut. You rush to the door to block it and try to do whatever you can to keep this person.
• B (3 points) – Disappointment and some concern about the short term. After getting past that, a feeling that you could, at the very least, hire someone as good — possibly better.
• C (2 points) – Sudden feeling of relief and lightness. You rush to the door to open it and bid them farewell, knowing that you just received a golden opportunity to upgrade.

Use your employee Talent GPAs to calculate an average score for the entire team. Take a step back and evaluate your org chart. Is this the team you need on your bus? 

What is an ideal candidate profile?

At CareerPlug, we use a planning tool called the ideal candidate profile to help increase the likelihood of hiring the right person for any given role by taking time to understand what it will take to be successful in the role.

Smith says: “A lot of people that work with us have a hard time writing their job descriptions and I think that’s because they just try to write them on the fly. They don’t spend a lot of time getting organized beforehand. Remember when you were in school and you had to write an outline before writing the essay? To me, writing a job description without any planning is a lot like that. So we created this planning document that I think is really helpful.”

Think of job postings as online ads

Job postings are a company’s opportunity to make a first impression on job seekers. James Winfrey from Talent.com adds his insights to creating effective job postings:

• Use standardized job titles
• Use keywords in the job title
• Format your job description to entice the right candidate

Winfrey adds: “Remove the ‘2’ from titles and don’t use punctuation. Account Manager 2 means nothing in comparison to Account Manager 1. That’s not how job seekers are searching. Avoid including internal jargon in your job postings and keep it direct. Think about how an applicant searches. Candidates search for specific job titles (‘Accounting’ or ‘Accountant’) and a location (‘Dallas, TX’). They don’t search for ‘Account Manager 2 – Life-Changing Opportunity to Join a World Class Team with Unlimited Earning Potential and Bring Your Dog to Work’ in Dallas, Texas.”

Examples: Good job titles vs. bad job titles

Take action

CareerPlug is built around a structured hiring process that has helped over 12,000 clients get the right people in the right seats on their “bus.” Demo the software with one of our hiring experts today to learn more about how we can help strengthen your team with the right hires.